Twisted
by LOSE IT ALL
Summary: Detectives work desperately to recover a pair of missing siblings. A discovery leads them to believe that the disappearances might involve more people than they anticipated.
1. Chapter 1

Twisted, Chapter One

SUMMARY: Detectives work desperately to recover a pair of missing siblings. A discovery leads them to believe that the disappearances might involve more people than they anticipated.

"Brad, go get your brother and sister. It's time for breakfast and I've already called them twice," Dana Locke told her ten-year-old son.

"I don't want to go get them; they're all the way upstairs!" Brad whined.

"Your mother didn't ask if you wanted to, Bradley," Jason Locke told his middle child sternly.

Brad made a face and slid off the stool and walked upstairs, grumbling the whole way. "Ben! Wake up!" He yelled from the doorway of the room he shared with his little brother. He then moved to the room right next to Ben's. "Brooke! It's time for breakfast. We have to leave soon, so wake up!"

Brad waited and didn't hear anything from either bedroom. He rolled his eyes and headed into his bedroom to get dressed. Ben! Get up!" He exclaimed, walking over to Ben's bed and shaking the lump under the covers. He cried out at how soft the lump was and drew back the blanket. The lump was a stuffed animal and a pillow.

Brad then ran into Brooke's room and turned on the light, realizing for the first time that her bed wasn't even unmade.

He ran back downstairs.

"Mom! Dad! Ben and Brooke aren't in their beds!" He exclaimed.

"Don't joke like that," Jason said absentmindedly, tossing pieces of toast onto his children's plates.

"I'm not joking, dad. Ben's bed just had a pillow and his bear and Brooke's bed is made!"

Dana looked at Jason, her eyes wide with fear. "Call 911, I'm going to look around outside," Jason called, already running for the front door.

Detectives Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson responded to the 911 call reporting a missing youth and a missing adult.

Olivia began following the police responding to the call while Elliot began getting details from the parents who were obviously distraught.

"Bennet Samuel Locke. He's seven," Jason told Elliot, offering a wallet-sized color photograph of the first-grader. He had dark brown hair and bright green eyes.

"But he goes by Ben," Dana said, holding the stuffed animal that had been in the bed rather than their child. "Our son Brad found it in the bed when he went to wake up Ben. Ben never sleeps with it, it just stays on the bookshelf that's attached to his bed," she explained.

"Did you let police see it before you picked it up?" Elliot asked.

"No…I just panicked, and grabbed it. Here, you can have it now," she said. Elliot took it gingerly and handed it to a passing officer.

"What about the adult that is missing?" Elliot asked.

"Our daughter Brooke. Brooke Audrey Locke. She is eighteen. We can still report her, right?" Jason asked, handing Elliot a picture of Brooke. She and Ben, as well as Brad, shared the same hair and eye color.

"Yes, of course. You mentioned that her bed wasn't made. Are you sure she came home last night?"

"Yeah, she had dinner with us. She got home from the college at around 6 and we had dinner at 6:30. I don't remember seeing her after that, though…" Dana trailed off.

"But that's not unusual," Jason pointed out, "she often goes into her room after dinner and we don't see her again. She's taking a big course load to avoid having to take summer classes."

"Yeah but she comes out for a drink or something. We didn't see her again last night at all," Dana remarked.

"Do you think she went somewhere?" Elliot asked.

"No. She's pretty disciplined about her school work. She's actually lost a lot of friends lately from not wanting to do anything but study. She sees her boyfriend occasionally, but that's it," Jason said.

"I'll put in the alerts for Ben and Brooke," Elliot told them, going to walk away.

"are you going to do that Amber Alert thing for them?" Dana asked hopefully.

Elliot shook his head. "There's not enough information. We have to have a description of the kidnapper, of the car…Plus…" He stopped, realizing that it would probably not be best to piss off parents of missing children this early in the investigation.

"What?" Jason asked.

"Was there any tension between you and Brooke?" Elliot asked carefully.

"No. Of course not, why?"

"The first people we suspect in these type things is always family, so please don't think you're being attacked."

"Look, we didn't kidnap our own children. I understand that this route has to be taken first, but I don't want time wasted on investigating us when we're obviously upset at this, when someone has our son and daughter."

"We will investigate any possible lead. Is it possible that Brooke got upset at something and she and Ben took off?"

"No!" Dana finally cut in. "Brooke didn't take her brother. Why would you even suggest something like that?"

"Ben shares a room with your other son. There's one window in that room, and it's above Brad's bed. So someone would have had to enter their room through the door, which is also much closer to Brad's bed, and take a struggling seven-year-old without even waking his brother, who was a foot away. And Brooke's bed hadn't even been slept in, so it seems that she would have been awake when she was presumably taken, and therefore would have also put up a big fight," Elliot explained.

Jason took a step closer to Elliot.

"Brooke is missing. Someone took her. Someone took Bennet. Find my children," he said through clenched teeth, grabbing Dana's hand and they headed outside.

As Elliot went to walk through the house one more time, he noticed a young boy sitting at the kitchen's breakfast bar, eating eggs and toast.

"Hey. You must be Brad," Elliot greeted him.

"Yep," Brad responded, not looking up at him.

"I bet you're upset about all this."

"Do I still have to go to school? I think I should stay home. I have a test today and I didn't do my homework," he said.

Elliot eyed him. "Um, I don't know about that, buddy. Hey, do you know anything about your brother and sister? Why they weren't here this morning?"

Brad shrugged. "I mean, there was-" He started but Jason stormed into the kitchen.

"Don't talk to my son without my permission," he snapped at Elliot, motioning for Brad to come near him. He steered his son out of the kitchen as Olivia walked past them and over to Elliot.

"Find out anything?" She asked him.

"I think we need to find a way to speak to the brother. The dad doesn't want us to talk to him for some reason."


	2. Chapter 2

Twisted, Chapter Two

SUMMARY: Detectives work desperately to recover a pair of missing siblings. A discovery leads them to believe that the disappearances might involve more people than they anticipated.

* * *

It had been two hours since the Locke family had reported seven-year-old Ben and eighteen-year-old Brooke missing.

Elliot, Olivia and Cragen were at the station looking at the layout of the Locke townhouse while Munch and Fin scoured the neighborhood, asking the neighbors if they had heard anything strange over the nighttime hours.

"It's a two-story townhouse. The master bedroom is on the first floor, on the far end of the home attached to the living room. Upstairs the three bedrooms are in a row," Elliot pointed at the rough sketch an officer had drawn. They usually didn't focus so much on the layouts themselves, but they also usually didn't have multiple missing people from a house. After Elliot told Cragen about Brad Locke's indifference, Cragen had immediately become suspicious of the family.

"The left bedroom is the playroom for the boys. Their parents said that they hadn't been in there for a couple of days to their knowledge, because they had been so busy. The middle bedroom is the room that Ben and Brad shared. Brad's bed is the bed in the left side of the room, closest to the door. The one window, which is double-paned, is directly above his bed. There's no space between the bed and the wall, so even if it did look like someone had come through the door, they would have had to step over Brad. Ben's bed is on the opposite side of the room, much farther from the door than Brad. Brooke was in the other room. Her window was open but her parents said that that was normal."

"Was there any signs of a struggle?" Cragen asked, staring hard at the sketch of the bedrooms and location of the beds and the windows.

"They found one of Ben's socks twisted up in the sheets, and another one just outside the door. Someone had deliberately placed a pillow and stuffed animal under the blanket to make it seem as if Ben was curled up underneath the blanket. There was also a glass of water knocked over that had been on the night stand beside Ben's bed," Olivia explained.

"And the older brother didn't hear anything?" Cragen asked incredulously.

"Well, he started to say something but his dad walked in and pulled him away," Elliot said.

"There was nothing in Brooke's room. Nothing. Nothing knocked over, no socks left behind. Absolutely no struggle," Olivia finished.

"What are we thinking?" Cragen turned to Elliot and Olivia.

"Inside job," Elliot said at the same time Olivia said, "Stranger abduction."

"Why?" Olivia demanded of Elliot.

"Liv, you weren't there when that kid asked me if he was going to be allowed to miss school. He wasn't fearful; he wasn't worried that his siblings had disappeared. He wanted to stay home so he didn't have to turn in homework. And then the dad wouldn't let me talk to him. How could he have slept through a glass of water being knocked off the table, or his brother struggling? And where was Ben when this kidnapper was fixing his bed to look like he was still sleeping there? If the guy had put him down wouldn't he have tried to cry out? To run? It doesn't add up."

"So what do you suppose happened? Mom or dad murdered their kids and the other son isn't scared of them in the least bit, either?" Olivia asked.

"I don't know the details. We've been on the case for two hours. I'm just saying that it doesn't add up. I don't know if maybe Brooke took Ben for some reason, or if one of the parents did something to Ben for some reason. Maybe Brad knows that they're safe, and that's why he's not upset. I don't know. I just don't think that a stranger walked in and took a teen-age girl and a little boy."

"Well, I think they did. The parents were obviously distraught. Maybe Brad is a heavy sleeper. It's not like that glass shattered, and it landed on carpet. And if the kidnapper had a weapon or held onto Ben with one arm, it's not hard to shove a pillow under a blanket. Maybe the guy was going for Brooke and Ben walked in. Maybe the guy was going for Ben and Brooke walked in, since she obviously never went to bed. There's a million different scenarios, and I don't think we should jump to the parents being psychotic murderers."

"No one's jumping to anything. I'm going to have to agree with Elliot for now. But, like he said, it's only been a couple of hours," Cragen interjected just as Munch and Fin walked in.

"Anything?" Cragen asked, rubbing his temples as Elliot and Olivia eyed each other.

"Yeah, actually. Neighbors to the right heard a scream from the house at around 3 in the morning. A kid from the left townhouse was sneaking back into his house at around 2:30 and said that he saw someone running across the lawn towards the house. His name is…Chad Humphries, he said it looked like a guy but that it could have been a girl with her hair up, it was too dark to tell," Munch told them, handing his notepad over to Cragen.

"Did they say what the scream sounded like? Like if it could have come from Ben or Brooke?" Cragen asked.

"Um, the neighbor-Jane van Deer-said that if she were to guess it would have been from Ben, but that she was disoriented because the scream woke her up. She couldn't really tell," Fin explained.

"So the neighbor heard a scream but not the kid who was in the room?" Elliot said, raising an eyebrow at Olivia.

"Shut up. He could have screamed once he was outside," she pointed out.

"Maybe," Cragen said doubtfully, "but for now, let's try to talk to the brother."

* * *

Munch and Fin were told to search the database to see if there were any similar cases in the area while Elliot and Olivia headed back to the house to try to talk to Brad Locke.

When they got to the Locke home, there were even more police officers there. They walked up to an officer filling out some sort of report.

"Where are the parents?" Olivia asked him. She knew that they would have a hard time talking to Brad with the Lockes hanging around.

"They're being questioned. Turns out that there was a suspected abuse complaint filed on them a couple of days ago by Ben Locke's teacher," the officer informed them.

Elliot looked at Olivia. "What'd the complaint say?"

The officer flipped through a couple of pages on his clipboard. "Um, teacher overheard Ben telling a friend that his dad told him that he was stupid because of some grade he made. She said that he often puts himself down, and once pointed to a child's low grade and called her a 'stupid ass'. When she asked him where he heard something like that from, he said his dad told his brother that. She lists a couple of other instances that led her to file the report about emotional abuse."

"Where's Brad Locke?" Olivia asked the officer. He absentmindedly pointed towards the small backyard, where the swung-open gate revealed a small jungle gym.

"Emotional abuse does not translate to murder," Olivia said before Elliot could even start.

"Come on, Liv. The kid just coincidentally vanishes a couple of days after an abuse complaint is filed?"

"I think a lot of people are forgetting that his older sister is missing as well. Why would they kill two of their kids for a complaint?"

"I don't know why these people kill their kids. All's I know is, something's weird about this whole thing."

They walked up to Brad, who was sitting on top of the slide playing a handheld game.

"What are you doing, Brad?" Elliot asked.

"Playing my DS," he answered.

"Guess you got to stay home, huh?"

"Yeah! It's great because now I bet I won't even have to do that stupid test," he grinned.

"Brad? Do you realize that your brother and sister are missing?" Olivia asked softly, a little perturbed by his indifference.

"Sure," he said, looking up at her and turning off the game. "But I know they'll be okay."

"How? Did someone say something to you?" Elliot asked.

Brad stared straight ahead for a moment.

"No. I just know. Bad things don't happen to kids who are good. And Ben and Brooke are always pretty good."

"Who told you that? That bad things don't happen to kids who are good?" Elliot asked.

"My dad. He told me that this morning before the police came because I think he thought I was upset."

"Brad…Did your mom or dad tell you not to tell us anything?" Olivia asked him.

"Nope. That's all dad said to me."

"Brad, are you sure you didn't wake up during the night? You didn't see anything?" She tried to coax him.

"No. I slept straight through the night. I didn't hear anything," Brad told them, but he looked away.

"Well, if you remember anything, you give me a call, okay?" Elliot told him, and handed him a card with his cell number on it. "Any time of the day or night. Because I know you might be a little scared right now, but it's important that we find your brother and sister."

Brad nodded. Elliot and Olivia started walking off Elliot asked one more question.

"Brad. Does Brooke have any webpages online?"

"Oh, yeah. She has a myspace and a different site, I don't remember it. Face-something. She's my friend on myspace! I'm on her top 8!" He said excitedly.

"You have a myspace? You're in the fifth grade," Elliot said incredulously.

"Sure. A lot of my friends do."

"Why does a little boy need a myspace?" Elliot whispered to Olivia as they walked off. He was thinking of his twins. Even though they were fourteen, he was still reluctant to allow them to have those pages when he knew, and dealt with, the sick freaks that tended to be on the sites.

"Why does my friend's eight-year-old daughter need a cell phone? Or her four-year-old need an iPod? Times are changing, El," Olivia responded.

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	3. Chapter 3

**Twisted, Chapter 3**

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"Find anything?" Elliot asked Munch when he and Olivia got back to the station after talking more to Brad.

"One similar case, I guess. Four-year-old boy and seven-year-old girl, Kyle and Tessa Masters, both disappeared over night about a mile from the Locke home. Turned up dead a weak later," Finn explained.

"Major differences? Similarities?" Cragen asked, marking the two locations on a map.

"Differences: Siblings were very close in age. Shared a room. Though he hasn't been charged, most believe that their father did it…He and mom had separated a month earlier and he was known to be abusive. Kids turned up stabbed to death less than a block from his apartment. Couldn't nab him because he had a pretty air-tight alibi."

"And the similarities?"

"It was a sibling pair. That's about it. But, there was an eight-year-old boy who went missing about a year back. He looks a lot like Ben Locke does, and was about five miles away."

"And what did you two get from the brother?" Cragen asked Elliot and Olivia.

"He said that she does have two on-line webpages. Myspace and facebook. I think he knows more than he's saying. His dad told him this morning that 'Bad things don't happen to kids who are good'. He said he thought it was because he was upset, but it sounds like a threat to me. Maybe about the abuse complaint filed at Ben and Brad's school a few days ago," Elliot reported.

"We need to find a way to get into her accounts," Olivia said. "Maybe she got some sort of message that would give us a lead."

"I'm sure it won't be too hard to hack into a teenage girl's myspace," Finn said, turning back to the computer. "E-mail?"

"No, it's not going to be too hard, and we don't even have to use our detective skills. Brad knew his sister's information. Her e-mail is ''. Her password is 'freebird3'," Olivia told him.

"Ah, annoying little brothers. Helping solve kidnappings, one sneak at a time," Finn mumbled. "And we're in."

They plugged the computer up to the TV so that everyone could read. One thing they noticed quickly was that a majority of the messages were from a guy named Josh.

"Click on the top message. It'll have all the messages before that, too," Munch said.

Everyone looked at him.

"What? My last girlfriend may or may not have been acquired using social networking sites," he mumbled.

"That's almost kind of sad," Finn remarked, clicking on the top message.

"That son of a bitch," Olivia broke the silence as the group read.

"'You stupid bitch. I will kill you. I'll kill your whole fucking family!!! No one else will ever want you so there's no point in leaving me. Your pathetic!'" Elliot read.

"Well, not only does he suffer from not knowing the English language, he may have come up to #1 on an investigation. I'm sure he'll be proud," Munch remarked.

"She was trying to break up with him," Olivia said slowly as she scanned the conversation.

"'I can't deal with this anymore, Josh. I'm tired of lying to my parents, of covering up the marks…You keep saying you'll quit, but you don't…Stay away from me.' That was her last message to him before he threatened to kill her. He had been hitting her."

"Find him," Cragen ordered. "Finn and Munch, go find Josh. Elliot and Olivia, go talk to the mother of the siblings murdered. Find out what she thinks about the dad doing it."

* * *

Munch knocked on the home they hoped was Josh. The nineteen-year-old had put it on his page for the world to see. "He probably didn't think that we were who was going to be seeing it," Finn mused.

"Yes?" The teen who answered the door was not who they were expecting.

"Josh? Josh Perkins?" Finn asked. The profile hadn't featured a picture for them to go by.

"Yeah. What's up?"

He was clean-cut, in khakis and a polo. They weren't quite sure why it surprised them—they had dealt with violent people of all ages, sizes and looks. From the way the kid had been talking through his messages, they expected a kid looking…A bit more angry looking.

"We're here about the disappearance of your girlfriend, Brooke."

"I didn't know she was missing," he said. He appeared to be worried.

"Sure you didn't," Munch replied. "I think we need to talk."

"Oh, sure. Um, come in," he moved aside to allow the officers inside.

Finn and Munch exchanged looks. They weren't use to suspects being so easy, and were going to suggest that he come down to the station.

"I was just about to put the baby down, so if you'll wait just a second," he said, picking up a little girl crawling around in a playpen and walking towards a back bedroom.

"Are we in an alternate universe? Did this guy threaten to 'kill your fucking family'?" Munch whispered.

Josh came back out.

"You have a kid?"

"My mom and step-dad died right after she was born. Murdered. I got my little sister, Jana. We don't have any other family, so she was going to be put in foster care," he told them, picking up a few toys on the floor and throwing them into the play pen.

"It gets better," Finn mumbled.

"So, what about Brooke? When'd she go missing?" Josh asked.

"Last night sometime. Her and her little brother," Finn told him, eyeing for a reaction.

"Oh, my gosh. Do you have any leads?" He asked.

"Yeah we do. You're our main one, though, so this is sort of awkward," Munch informed him, handing him the print-outs of the myspace messages.

Josh scanned them.

"What about this?"

"Are those your messages?" Finn asked.

"Sure. We had a fight, big deal."

"You threatened to kill your girlfriend and her family a couple of nights before her and her brother disappear. That's a big deal. And there's that thing about you hitting her."

"I was caught in the moment. Everyone says 'oh, I'm going to kill them!' And I have never, ever hit Brooke!"

"So she just said that, in a message that she thought no one else would read?"

"Brooke has this other world going on in her head. There's something wrong with her. I've tried to break it off before but I worked damn hard to help her with her issues, which is why I got so upset when she tried to break up with me because I talked to another girl at our college. She'll tell anyone who will listen that she has this huge secret relationship with me, but everyone knows about me. And when we fight she tells people that I'm horrible to her. I've opened my home for her when her dad kicked her out for bad grades when we were seniors. He's the nutcase you should be looking at. I've never touched her."

* * *

Elliot and Olivia arrived at Shawna Masters' home. She was on her front porch, pushing an infant in a baby swing and reading.

"Ms. Masters?" Elliot asked.

She looked up and gave a small smile. "Do you have any information on my babies' case?" She asked hopefully.

"No. I'm sorry…We do have questions, though, if you don't mind. Another brother and sister disappeared near here and we're trying to see if there's any connection to Kyle and Tessa."

The little amount of hopefulness faltered.

"The only reason I wake up anymore is this little guy," she said, smiling at the baby. "I separated from David as soon as I found out I was pregnant. I refused to carry another child into this world under his wrath. He had hit me for the last time, had yelled at our kids for the last time. I just thank God that he didn't know I was pregnant or he would have found some way to make me miscarry. I had Jeremy three months after the kids were killed."

"So you're still pretty sure that your ex murdered your kids?" Olivia asked softly, noticing that tucked into the swing next to Jeremy was a picture of two little kids, who she assumed was Kyle and Tessa.

"There was one knife missing from his kitchen set that he had just bought. Has never been found. The kids were killed with a serrated knife just like the one missing. A spot of blood was found in that apartment that matched the same type as Kyle's. The kids had never been there. Someone saw a guy matching David's height and his description from behind to a T, near where they found my babies' bodies. All of this, and they didn't have enough evidence, because there's a video tape showing him at his office the morning they disappeared. They went missing some time between 4 and 6 AM, and he shows up at his office at 6:30, the earliest ever, and doesn't leave until 8, and some bimbo can account for his actions that night. He murdered our kids."

She was breathless.

"Well, was there anything that made them think it wasn't him?"

"He gave some heartfelt mumbo-jumbo on the news begging for them to show up. And because the site they were found at had been checked earlier that day and the bodies weren't there and he was at work all day," she admitted.

"But he did it. He stabbed his kids over a dozen times, each. He isn't your guy for those kids missing now."


	4. Chapter 4

Twisted, Chapter Four

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"So far, we've hit a million dead ends. How do two kids just disappear?" Stabler wondered out loud, crossing out the leads that they had followed up on so far.

"I still think that the parents don't have anything to do with it," Olivia said. "That other kid would have said something or acted a bit more scared if his father had murdered his brother and sister."

Elliot opened his mouth to argue with her when they noticed a teenage girl timidly walk their way.

"How can we help you?" Munch asked her.

"Um, the secretary lady downstairs told me this is where I needed to go with information on those two that are missing?"

"Here, take a seat," Fin stood up and offered her his seat.

"Okay, well…I was reading the newspaper, the local one, and it had an article on this. In it they said that the parents weren't suspected because they were there all night and Brad hadn't said anything to them…." She trailed off, looking at them hesitantly.

"Go on," Olivia urged.

"So, like this was really hard to do, but Brooke was my best friend in high school, and I've always thought her dad was mean. But I was at the store late that night getting some juice for my mom, and Mr. Locke was there. This was, like, at midnight. I definitely saw him. He walked around the store a lot, like at one point he was in the cleaning aisle, and then he'd be looking at cookies. Just all over the place. I don't think he hurt them…I guess…but it just seemed weird that the newspaper would say that he hadn't left all night when I know he did."

Cragen immediately sent Olivia and Elliot over to the Locke home. The father was talking to a reporter. "We need to talk. Now," Elliot demanded, grabbing the man's arm and pulling him into his home, where Brad sat at the counter playing a game.

"What the hell? Haven't I talked to you enough?"

"Yes but this time we're going to try talking about the truth. Maybe you should tell your son to go to his room or something," Olivia said coldly.

"My son can stay and listen. I haven't done anything wrong. He can be here to learn about what railroading means," Mr. Locke snarled.

"Someone sounds paranoid. I guess I'll do your parenting for you. Brad, how about you go outside and play?" Elliot said, smiling at the boy who hadn't been paying the trio any attention.

"Whatever," he mumbled, standing up and walking out without even looking at them.

"Don't tell my son what to do. Why the hell aren't you out there looking for my kids? Nice to know that our taxes pay for the police to tell my non-endangered kid what to do."

"We don't know if he's not in danger," Elliot said, smirking.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Olivia looked over and saw a newspaper on the counter. She grabbed it and flipped through it real quick until she found the article the teenage girl told them about. "The father of Brooke and Bennet, Jason, reports that police are looking at a variety of leads. One unidentified police official remarked that Jason and Dana have both been cleared as suspects. 'We have no reason to believe that either parent has anything to do with these abductions. Neither of them left the residence last night and were believed to have been sleeping at the time the children went missing,'" she read before slamming the newspaper on the counter.

"So?" Jason demanded.

"You need to come down to the station. We have a few questions for you," Elliot told him.

"Am I under arrest? Doubt it. No, I'm not leaving my home while my kids are missing. Brad needs me. Dana needs me," Jason refused.

"Fine. We can do this here," Olivia looked at Elliot, who shrugged in agreement.

"We have someone who says that they saw you at the store around midnight the night your kids went missing," Elliot said.

Jason stared at the two of them for a few seconds and then rolled his eyes. "Seriously? I didn't know I had to report every time I took a piss!" He turned into the kitchen and started pouring himself a drink.

Elliot stomped over to him and pushed the glass out of the way, causing Jason to spill alcohol everywhere. "What the f-"

"Your CHILDREN are MISSING. If on the night they went missing you went out to check the damn mail I want to know. If you went to the backyard to get something from a shed, I want to know. I want to know every time you breathed funny, you got me? What the hell were you doing out at midnight?" Elliot screamed.

"Look, me and my wife aren't in the best place right now. I needed a breather. We had a fight and I ran out. I didn't know that my kids were gonna go missing or I would've made sure I stayed in my house with my thumb up my ass rather than gone out," he hissed, looking around. "Now get out of my house. Quit coming here and trying to get shit on me. I didn't kill my kids. Brad didn't see anything. Get the hell out!"

Elliot noticed Brad had walked back into the room. He leaned in to whisper to Jason, "I know you had something to do with this, you prick. I will be back. Hopefully with a warrant." He smiled at Jason as Jason glared at him.

Elliot and Olivia turned around to leave, but right before they walked out the door they stopped in their tracks.

Walking in was a teenage girl who was obviously bleeding from her head. She barely managed to make it in the door before her legs crumpled and she slid to the floor.

Elliot stooped down and touched her neck. "She barely has a pulse..Call for a bus!"


	5. Chapter 5

**Twisted, Chapter 5**

Reviews? Please? AIM? Bebravet0night! I use to be all up in the loop on but not anymore. But yeah feel free to message me.

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Following the flurry of activity with the ambulance arriving and leaving, and Dana and Jason Locke taking off to the hospital after it, Brad was left by himself in the home.

"We can't leave him here," Elliot said, "I can't believe they left him."

"I'm ten-years-old. I'm almost a teenager. I can take care of myself. My parents leave me alone all the time," Brad exclaimed, putting his game on the counter. "I don't need a freaking baby-sitter."

"Look, your brother is missing and your sister just showed up with a gash in the back of her head. You're not staying here alone," Elliot told him.

"El, go outside and see what's going on. I'll stay inside with him until I figure out what to do with him. We'll probably take him by the hospital," Olivia offered.

"Stop talking about me like I'm not here. Everyone does that! It's annoying!" Brad yelled. "Everyone was acting like Ben would be okay with Brooke, that she would protect him, and now Brooke's back and Ben's not," he lowered his face, tears threatening to spill out, "Ben's probably dead."

Olivia rushed over to him and wrapped her arms around him. She expected him to squirm away but instead he fell into her embrace, sobs wracking his body. "I just want things to go back to normal. And if I want that, I have to tell the truth about what I saw."

"What'd you see?" Elliot demanded, stepping closer to them.

"This old guy…He was in our room, facing Ben's bed, but I thought I was dreaming so when I woke up, I didn't think anything of it," he said, still hugging Olivia.

"Brad, why didn't you tell us before?"

"Because I went to my dad after he called the police, and I was like 'dad, I saw some guy in the room last night, but I thought I was dreaming', and he told me to shut up and that I was dreaming. And that I better not say anything or they'll take me away to where they take crazy people. You won't really do that will you?"

"No, of course not Brad. Did you get any look at the man's face?"

"No, I was only awake for a little while and then I fell asleep."

"You've been a big help, Brad. Hey, while Elliot goes outside, why don't you show me how to play this game?"

* * *

Elliot walked outside, knowing that there was more to the case then a pedophile abducting the pair. There had to be.

There were still many police officers and investigators milling around. He followed the trail of officers and blood for a few feet until it turned into the alley.

An investigator named James Dirk raised a broken piece of wood and showed it to Elliot as Elliot neared him. "This is definitely what was used to attack Brooke Locke," he said, pointing out the blood on the end of the wood. "And since it seems like kind of a frenzied attack, I'd assume that there weren't gloves used and that you'll probably get fingerprints off it. I'm sending it to the lab now, and I'll get a rush on it," he told him.

"Thanks. You think you know how it played out?" Elliot asked, looking around. It was your typical NYC alley, one they found themselves in on a near-weekly basis. Dumpsters, discarded wood and other debris littered the alley. No windows faced this alley, of course, which Elliot expected given the way this investigation was going.

"She was obviously hit from behind, and I doubt she was being chased because there are apartments all down the back alley that this connects to and no one reported hearing a commotion. Whoever attacked her either hid here, which seems unlikely, or saw her walking through it and attacked her then."

"Thanks, James," Elliot told him as the guy walked off to ensure that the wood went straight to the lab. He walked back to the Locke home, where Brad was excitedly showing Olivia how to play one of his games. "Hey, buddy, how about we take you to the hospital?" Elliot asked, smiling at him.

Brad shrugged and put his game in his coat pocket. He took Olivia's hand and the three walked out to the squad car.

* * *

At the hospital, Dana hugged Brad. "Oh, baby, we didn't mean to leave you there, everything just happened at once."

"How's Brooke?" Brad asked, ignoring her apology.

"She's okay. She's awake, we just got done seeing her for a few minutes," Jason told his son, not meeting Olivia and Elliot's eyes.

"We need to talk to her, to get as much information as we can," Olivia said. Dana nodded, but Jason just looked away.

"Did she say anything about it yet?" Elliot asked.

"No, nothing. We didn't talk about it, we just made sure she was okay…Then remembered Brad and came out here to call someone to grab him," Dana laughed, obviously embarrassed about the situation.

"Well we're going to go talk to her. Please don't come in…It's always easier without parents," Olivia told them.

Elliot and Olivia got Brooke's room number and walked in. She was laying quietly, staring out the window.

"Hey, Brooke," Elliot greeted her.

She turned her head and smiled meekly at them.

"I'm Elliot, this is my partner Olivia. We just want to ask you a few questions. It's really important, but we'll try to be as quick as we can. We have to find your brother."

"Brad's in the lobby, my parents told me. Ben's probably with a friend," she said dismissively.

Olivia and Elliot exchanged a sideways glance. Amnesia…? They both seemed to have the same thought. They knew from hearing the medics talk that the injury looked a lot worse than it really was, and that the major contributing factor to her passing out was more from shock and blood loss than an injury to the brain.

"Brooke, what's the last thing you remember?"

"I remember being at the house after being in the alley…Someone came up from behind me and smacked me in the head. By the time I stood up and turned around, they were gone…So I walked home and then I know I passed out."

"What about before that?" Olivia continued her questioning.

"Look, I'm sorry for running away. I didn't know that they could still call the police on me if I'm 18 and in college," she muttered bitterly. "I wasted your time and I'm sorry."

"Brooke—what about your brother? Ben? Where'd you take him?" Elliot asked, starting to get a sinking feeling in his stomach.

"I-I didn't take Ben anywhere! I left last night after my dad went to the store…I just kind of ran until I couldn't run anymore, and then ran some more," she admitted. "Why? What happened? Is Ben okay?"


	6. Chapter 6

**Twisted, Chapter 6**

**

* * *

**

"We're back to square one," Cragen said, staring at the wall where they had tacked up photos of Ben, Brooke, Brad, Jason and Dana Locke.

"I don't think anyone thinks that Dana Locke knew anything of whatever happened," Olivia remarked, "and I believe Brooke."

"What exactly did Brooke say?" Cragen asked.

"Not much. She ran away after her dad left for the store, but she didn't say why. We tried to ask her later but her parents walked in. She said that she didn't know Ben was missing until we told her," Elliot read from a few notes he had jotted down.

"Where has she been for her to have not heard about him and her supposedly missing?" Fin demanded. "It's been all over the news since it happened."

"She just said she stayed at a friend's apartment while the friend was out of town. We checked her story and it was true. The friend doesn't have cable, so she never watched TV or really left until she felt bad and decided to come home," Olivia told them.

Cragen shook his head. "Have you talked to the father yet about what Brad said?"

"No. We decided to corroborate Brooke's story first."

"I want him in here. I want the mom in another room. I want the boy in another. I'm sick of this family's crap. We've tried being nice with them; someone needs to play hardball with Jason."

Olivia and Elliot managed to convince the Lockes to come to the station without much hesitation, though Elliot's threat that he would arrest Jason Locke based on obstruction of justice.

"Why do we keep having to talk about the same shit over and over again?" Jason demanded.

Elliot stared at him.

"My son is missing. Why would I hurt my child? You people aren't doing anything by constantly asking Dana and me questions!"

"Mr. Locke, we have people out looking for your son. However, the investigation has taken a turn with your daughter's return. It's a different situation now," Elliot told him calmly.

"Yeah. I've told her all about how she has delayed the focus being on her brother," Jason snapped. "I have never been so angry at someone as I am right now."

"She's your child too," Elliot started, "Aren't you at least glad that she's safe?"

"Don't ask stupid questions. Of course I am. But we were looking for HER and Ben when we should've been focusing on Ben all along. She was holed up in some apartment, perfectly safe. She didn't care that her brother was missing."

"She didn't know."

"Whatever. The fact remains that Ben is still missing—"

"And, if you want to know the truth, we think that you know exactly where your boy is."

Jason laughed. "That's funny, because if you want to know the truth, you don't have a damn shred of evidence. Or I'd be behind cell bars and not sitting here."

"Did Brad tell you that he told us what you said to him?" Elliot asked, smiling to himself as Jason's cocky grin faltered.

"No, but I'm sure you're really going to use the words of a kid whose brother is missing against me."

"You don't even know what he said, so how can you dismiss it?"

"Of course I know what he said!" Jason snapped. "The kid had a damn nightmare."

"You didn't find it suspicious or even worth mentioning that he said something about seeing a strange man in his room the night his brother disappeared?" Elliot yelled, slapping the table in front of Jason.

"Brad has nightmares every other night. Do you want me to tell you the one about Freddy Krueger? Maybe he has Ben!"

* * *

Olivia was sitting across from Brad, watching him drink a Coke.

"This must be pretty tough for you, Brad," she said softly.

Brad stared at the table. "At first I thought that it was going to be over quick. But now I keep hearing people say all these things about time. I don't want Ben to be dead," he said, wiping at his eyes.

"Brad, we're going to find him, sweetie. We just need to talk about that night again, okay?"

"My dad said that you guys aren't doing your best to find Ben!" He exclaimed. "And that by talking to us you're wasting time. And so I shouldn't talk to you much."

"We're trying our hardest to find Ben. I promise. We just need to talk some more. There are so many people out there looking for your brother."

"Well why aren't you and Elliot?"

"We're different kinds of police officers, Brad. We're more for investigation and talking to people. And then there are police officers who are out there right now, looking for him everywhere."

Brad didn't say anything after that. Instead, he took to reading the ingredients on the can.

"Okay, so tell me everything, starting from when you woke up and saw that man."

"Well, I woke up but I thought I was having a dream…And he was just standing there. Then I woke up and I looked at Ben's bed but it looked like he was under the covers sleeping. I went downstairs and my parents told me to get Ben and Brooke for breakfast, so I went upstairs and they weren't in bed. Then they called the police and that's when I told dad about the guy and he told me I was dreaming. I tried to mention it again after that and he just said the same thing."

"And you don't remember anything about his looks?"

"No! He was turned to Ben's bed. I guess you could tell that he was old. He had gray hair."

"Brad, has your dad said anything else weird? Maybe anything about Ben, or your sister?"

Brad shook his head.

Olivia smiled at him and told him that she'd be back, then stepped out to where Fin, Cragen and Munch were waiting. "Nothing new," she said, shrugging.

"Dana Locke wasn't much help either," Munch said. "She didn't even know that Brad had seen someone. I mentioned it and she got this weird look on her face, though."

Cragen's phone rang and he turned around to answer it.

"We're getting absolutely nowhere with this family. Brad is just completely lost, Jason is a cocky asshole, and Dana's world is falling apart. I think she believes that Jason had something to do with it."

"That was Warner. They found some hair on Ben's bed, and it matched someone in the database," Cragen said. "Liv, you and Fin go talk to her right now."


End file.
